Pretend you have a ballot for the 2012 edition of Sight & Sound's top 10 movies of all time list

i'm also a bit mystified by the love for celine and julie.

i'm not going to say it's a bad film, but it's certainly an awkward one and i find it extremely irritating. i've liked some other rivette films, though, like secret defense.

a superfan informed me after my first viewing that it was "a puzzle," I had no idea and was horrified.

Don't get the mystification around Celine and Julie go Boating as top 10 material. You can make a fairly good case. Agree there are better films by Rivette (but only a couple), however its the one which is most available.

Quite enjoying S&S series looking at an alternative top 10:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49831

Hour of the Furnaces would be a good one to fuck w/ppl.

s&s essay on listology was really interesting, I thought

where was that?

a superfan informed me after my first viewing that it was "a puzzle," I had no idea and was horrified.

― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 6 May 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, I see what the 'superfan' said and all but its not a puzzle to be worked out and put together - but it has elements to be mulled over that hardly add up to a puzzle. To be 'horrified' is an overreaction though.

it's in the new issue, amateurist, by michael atkinson. tracks when we became interested in listmaking, & how the list ends up being more useful as a gauge of topical mood & trend than as an actual canon.

My ballot would probably be something like this:

1. My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki, 1988)
2. Street of Shame (Mizoguchi, 1956)
3. Down by Law (Jarmusch, 1986)
4. Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964)
5. Human Resources (Cantet, 1999)
6. Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979)
7. Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
8. Farewell, My Concubine (Kaige, 1993)
9. Show Me Love (Moodysson, 1998)
10. La grande bouffe (Ferreri, 1973)

Depending on my mood, I migth switch The Philadelphia Story for number 10. The only post-1999 movies I could consider including are Songs from the Second Floor (Andersson), and Letters to Father Jaakob (Härö).

celine and julie is a game rather than a puzzle, and it invites you to play, too

how the list ends up being more useful as a gauge of topical mood & trend than as an actual canon.

well of course, and the top ten is only occasionally interesting (such as the many restorations/revivals of vertigo helping to propel it upward, ditto sunrise)--it's the individual ballots that are usually most intriguing.

celine & julie just struck me--the two times i sat through it--as flat-footed cinematically, and yet so impressed with itself.

Street of Shame (Mizoguchi, 1956)

love this film so much.

as my list might indicate i kind of have a slight aversion to "visionary" postwar art films. they just seem too polluted with self-conscious striving for masterpiece status to be top-rank. i'd apply that to tarkovsky, antonioni, fellini, bergman... all of whom have made films i like a lot.

although i do have some prewar art films: epstein, dovzhenko, etc.

i don't think many films that wind up in the S&S top 10 are entirely free of 'self-conscious striving for masterpiece status' -- certainly 'sunrise,' 'vertigo,' and 'kane' all have some of that going on.

sure, i agree. it's the postwar art film's version of that striving that is more likely to turn me off.

although, having said that, while hitchcock was surely proud of vertigo i'm not sure his ambitions (or the taste contexts in which those ambitions could be validated in 1958) were quite the same as for antonioni et al

but notice that sunrise, vertigo, and kane are not on my list either!!

no one thinks Celiine et Julie is going to be top ten or twenty or even top 100, probably. was it brought up because Armond White wrote one of his ridiculous smackdowns of it? It's probably in my top 20 fwiw. I just really enjoy it.

i like 'c and j' a lot, but i think of it as kind of a three-hour remake of 'daisies' with no food fights.

c and j vs c on t

nevermind old joke

I admittedly prefer "visionary" filmmaking on that order to be so far gone that it doesn't give off any evidence of knowing it can be any other way. Antonioni c. L'eclisse gives me that impression.

Antonioni even at his best is one step too close to SCTV for me

So, awesome?

Andrea Martin > Monica Vitti

Zabriskie Point = Farm Film Report

yeah antonioni seems like one of the most overrated filmmakers, even though i appreciate almost everything he's done to some degree or other (however that does NOT include beyond the clouds, yeesh)

there is so much that is wonderful about his "alienation trilogy" or whatever but to some extent i think they're not so much about emptiness as just kind of empty.

his first feature, chronicle of a love affair, is a stone masterpiece, and i can't deny l'avventura or the passenger either.

reeeal good! xp

I generally don't have a problem with masters striving to make masterpieces. Trying to argue that either Godfather is top-10 when Coppola can't figure out what to do with Diane Keaton, that's a problem.

i love manny farber's quote, "Unlike Klee, who stayed small and thus almost evaded affectation, Antonioni's aspiration is to pin the viewer to the wall and slug him with wet towels of artiness and significance."

i'd make an exception to my "rule" for playtime, which is definitely a postwar art film striving to be a masterpiece, but does so lightly and pretty much achieves everything it sets out to do--which has little to do with "significance."

I'm not sure I can really get on board with an aesthetics of smallness and lightness. Seems unduly limited. What's wrong with "significance"?

In any case I see Antonioni et al as heir to a certain strand of 19th century novel. Like the whole "novel of ideas" thing. Melville, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. And fwiw I find the "visionary" approach far freer than the evasion of "significance."

that farber quote is kind of symptomatic of why he's a brilliant writer but often frustrating as a critic -- he's holding antonioni to an insane standard. it's like when he complains that 'taxi driver' is unrealistic because de niro's cab never runs out of gas.

i dunno, his quote is a pretty accurate description of much of red desert

i'm not really offering an aesthetic program, just stating my preferences when the chips are down. that's what the thread is about no?

Yes of course. Didn't mean to give impression I was calling you out! (I actually really find your preferences in this regard really challenging and interesting so maybe just pushing back a little.)

And I guess this kernel of a debate is interesting to me because it touches on how we think about something like "modernism" in movies.

i was looking through some of the 2002 ballots and this one probably comes closest to my taste:

Peter von Bagh
director of Il cinema ritrovato festival
Finland
Top Ten

The Wedding March (von Stroheim)
Okraina (Barnet)
Make Way for Tomorrow (McCarey)
A Canterbury Tale (Powell, Pressburger)
Late Spring (Ozu)
Rio Grande (Ford)
Édouard et Caroline (Becker)
Bigger Than Life (N. Ray)
Man of the West (A. Mann)
And Life Goes On... (Kiarostami)

the japanese know where it's at too:

Li Cheuk-To
Chairman of the Hong Kong Critics Guild
Hong Kong
Top Ten

Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
Floating Clouds (Naruse)
The General (Keaton)
Mirror (Tarkovsky)
Pather Panchali (S. Ray)
The Puppetmaster (Hou)
Spring in a Small Town (Fei)
Tabu (Murnau)
Two or Three Things I Know about Her (Godard)
Vertigo (Hitchcock)

Yomota Inuhiko
Meiji Gakuin University
Japan
Top Ten

Kaagaz ke phool (Dutt)
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Mizoguchi)
A Touch of Zen (Hu)
L'Age d'or (Buñuel)
Le Vent d'est (Godard)
Accattone (Pasolini)
Vampyr (Dreyer)
Napoléon (Gance)
Il deserto rosso (Antonioni)
Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)

L'Age d'Or (Bunuel, 1930)
M (Lang, 1931)
Kikujiro (Kitano, 1999)
The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941)
Mishima (Schrader, 1985)
A Canterbury Tale (Powell & Pressburger, 1944)
Days and Nights in the Forest (Ray, 1970)
Zero de Conduite (Vigo, 1933)
For a Few Dollars More (Leone, 1965)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (Hitchcock, 1934)

I don't know if I expect Joel David's list to ever be topped.

Salò (Pasolini)
Manila by Night; City after Dark (Bernal)
Khalnayak (Ghai)
The Opening of Misty Beethoven (Metzger)
Hour of the Furnaces (Solanas)
La Règle du jeu (Renoir)
God Told Me To (Cohen)
La Région centrale (Snow)
Olympiad Berlin 1936 (Riefenstahl)
The Devil in Miss Jones (Damiano)

And fwiw I find the "visionary" approach far freer than the evasion of "significance."

Yeah, one of the major reasons I've never been able to get with the deification of screwball ethos.

how is screwball (which you sometimes broaden to mean "wacky comedy," but let's lay that aside) inherently less significant than horror? Both offer a vision of human trials that aim to reveal character.

to argue that either Godfather is top-10 when Coppola can't figure out what to do with Diane Keaton, that's a problem.

We've argued this before...My problem with Keaton is more the woodenness of her performance (sometimes she's okay) than Coppola not knowing what to do with her. But to me, there are supporting performances just as wooden in The Searchers and Vertigo.

Both offer a vision of human trials that aim to reveal character.

Horror offers a representation of a universal human emotion, one which is easily transmuted over to experiences (i.e. mechanized dehumanization) not necessarily closely related to the thing being represented (i.e. chainsaw massacres). Wacky comedy reveals people trying to make people laugh, which is fine, but usually it's better when my friends do it to me.

I see way more of my life in comedy. And invariably find comedy in the best horror too.

(I guess I won't quote Michael O'Donoghue's "Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy" again. Oops! Jerry Lewis's best films don't make me laugh that much.)

Agreed, I like Jerry Lewis movies because they are basically horror movies.

I wonder whether Criterion reissues of his later films have made L'Avventura less an obvious choice for inclusion. These days I'd rank L'Eclisse over it.

^^^ me, on all days

In any case I see Antonioni et al as heir to a certain strand of 19th century novel. Like the whole "novel of ideas" thing. Melville, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. And fwiw I find the "visionary" approach far freer than the evasion of "significance."

Kael cited Woolf, Mann, Joyce, and James in her review ("In any case I see Antonioni et al as heir to a certain strand of 19th century novel. Like the whole "novel of ideas" thing. Melville, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. And fwiw I find the "visionary" approach far freer than the evasion of "'significance.'")